People who dabble in branding probably know all the arguments that CEOs and non-marketing folk come up with when a new external brand strategy is being planned. Internal branding is even harder. In fact the two are interdependent.
I sat in a packed room today (at the IABC international conference that I have been reporting on for the past 2 days) and listened to a case study on internal branding at Qwest Telecom, and thought this was the most moving inside-out campaign I had ever heard of.
If you're in one of the states that Qwest serves, you'd have probably heard of the "Spirit of Service" theme. Most people would dismiss it as 'branding foo foo.' The presenter, a marketing VP named Mark Pitchford, showed us why the brand turnaround was more than a pretty new slogan.
The 'Spirit of Service' was the title of a painting done of a lineman, one Angus McDonald, who went out in the blizzard of 1988 to fix the phone line, and also rescued passengers trapped in a stalled train. Apparently there are thousands of employees who are children and grandchildren of people who worked in the original phone company, and they share their stories with the CEO, via email. It's these 'spirited' stories that are worked into the marketing. How do they make employees such a powerful part of the business strategy? Pitchford shared 5 principles that are worth following for any internal branding campaign:
1. Give employees the information they need and it will make them passionate about the company. The CEO often emails employees and responds to each email that comes in --some 80,000 over a two year period.
2. Build employee advocacy by giving everyone in the organization an opportunity to directly impact the bottom line. Qwest employees are part of a labor union, but they still volunteered time for grass-roots marketing.
3. Tap into your employees' minds. Encourage them to share their ideas.
4. Use measurement to thoroughly understand the level of engagement, and the build on it.
5. Celebrate accomplishments. Qwest always rewards employees for going above and beyond the call of duty for customers.
Interesting sidebar: All models used in Qwest branding are employees. Gives deeper meaning to 'employee communications,' doesn't it?
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